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jOBS (2013)

The story of Steve Jobs’ ascension from college dropout into one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century.

Historical (accurate or not) spoilers here.

After a very interesting movie, an ok biography and whatever else they can throw to make more money of his name, jOBS is yet another take on the co-founder of Apple Computers.

Just to be clear here: I read the biography and watched the old movie (both links listed above) and I’ll draw some references from both to explain this all. So… yeah, triple spoilers event!

First of all, this movie is the one the paints Jobs more ruthless than any other thing I saw/read. In “Pirates of the Silicon Valley”, Jobs is portrayed as a fun guy who only mistake was to leave a daughter behind — someone who, later, he made peace. In his auto-biography, he’s a genius who left a daughter behind, lost the company he created but, ultimately, got back into the company, made emends with his daughter and, ultimately, made the company profitable again. In this movie, Jobs is a quirky guy, who left his daughter behind, pushed his employees to the brink of madness, drove out his only true friend, saw enemies everywhere, lost his company, got back into the company and decided to take revenge on everyone he saw as being part of making him leave in the first place.

So… yeah, this is not the “Jobs was a genius” kinda of movie. Maybe it is the more accurate one, maybe it makes him more dark for the sake of getting more points for showing a different facet (or maybe it’s Hollywood tendency of making everything “darker” these days leaking over a biography). Who knows?

Thing is, Jobs is shown as a dark personality here. And you know, when he talks in that calm tone he used to show in his previous WWDCs? Well, it’s there, but the way Kutcher makes the same movements and talk in the same pace and with the same volume… it sounds much more like a cold, vengeful person than a patronizing, friendly person.

Speaking of which, Kutcher kills on those two aspects: voice and movement. When he talks, you hear Jobs; when he moves, you see Jobs movements (at least, from the presentations he did). The looks… well, not so much. But yeah, I can’t point the good job doing Jobs Kutcher did.